Top left: Lavender Field in the Luberon, France, 30x24, acrylic on canvas
Middle left: Fields Near Roussillon, France, 30x24, acrylic on canvas
Bottom left: Color Abstract, (detail) 30x24, acrylic on canvas
Top right: Susan Marx
2nd from top right: Here Comes the Sun, (detail) 30x24, acrylic on canvas
3rd down from right: Light, 30x24, acrylic on canvas
Bottom right: Susan Marx painting at Presby Memorial Iris Gardens, Montclair, NJ (photo credit, Michael Barkal)
An Abstract Impressionist Painter Who Loves Color...
Artist Susan Marx describes her work as Modern Abstract Impressionism, combining the light of the Impressionists, the brilliant color of the Fauves, and the energy of the Abstract Expressionists, to create shapes out of quick, assertive paint-filled strokes. Inspired by the French Impressionists, Susan works en plein air (outside), much the way her muses did with a concern for light, air and especially color.
Susan's bright, light-filled paintings burst with vibrant color providing a very personal, modern 'abstraction' of the period with a distinctive style that is uniquely her own. Her process involves becoming one with the earth. By working barefoot in the fields she has direct physical contact with her subject matter, taking in the landscape through all the senses of vision, touch, smell and hearing, using herself as a filter to process these elements onto her canvas.
"I am drawn to a specific spot for some indefinable reason. I look and look. I load my palette, pick up a brush, holding it as a conductor would hold his baton, and begin. At that point, I don't speak to the canvas; instead the canvas speaks to me. My feet are barefoot feeling the grass; I smell the air and the flowers in front of me. I am transported. I paint but lose the concept of time. Fast, faster, passionately painting, furiously painting. I cannot get the colors down fast enough. Then suddenly I need air. I stop and step back to look at my canvas one more time. The painting is done..."
Working with acrylics allows the artist to record her color impressions almost as quickly as her mind processes the subject and with immediacy that other medium don't allow.
The artist loves color and sees color everywhere, capturing the essence of the color and the emotion in her work, leaving the rest to the viewer's imagination, thereby making him/her an active participant in her work... often leaving some of the canvas blank so the work can breathe, a process that illuminate her brushstrokes that much more dynamically through the stark contrast of blank canvas and brilliant color.
"I don't paint flowers. I paint flowers to paint color..."
Someone once told Marx she works to the muse of Monet, Van Gogh and Joan Mitchell, which she was thrilled about. These are the artists that inspired her, guiding her artistic development, leading to her own very personal expression and allowing her to introduce her viewers to a beautiful world of color, light and energy.
Susan's home base is Orange, New Jersey, but her paintings provide a travelogue of her journeys. From the shores and nearby parks of her home state in New Jersey to the European travels calling her to the same landscapes her muses were drawn to, Marx's works speak not only to her process and artistic influences, but to her love of travel as well... and are as much a testament to the beauty she finds in her travels as the uniqueness of her work itself.
"My art comes from my radical amazement at the visual world around me, and my need to turn that experience into paint. Nature is my starting point, but not my end result. I observe nature very carefully and respond spontaneously to what I see and feel. I think of painting as drawing in color, relating warm and cool with each expressive paint-filled brushstroke, my personal handwriting."
Susan received a BFA in Painting from Boston University, College of Fine Arts, where she studied with Walter Murch, David Aronson, Karl Fortess and Robert Qwathmey. She has taken painting seminars in Giverney France, in Monet's garden and in Normandy; as well as in Arles, St. Remy de Provence, France, tracing the steps of Van Gogh.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows and is in private collections throughout the world. Susan is currently represented by Ashok Jain Gallery and Agora Gallery in New York, where she will be featured in an upcoming group show entitled Modalities of Expression:
MODALITIES OF EXPRESSION
At Agora Gallery in Manhattan
530 West 25th Street, New York, NY
October 10- October 30, 2014
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 16 from 6-8-m
More info for this event: http://www.theniceniche.com/events/paintings-by-susan-marx-in-a-group-show-entitled-modalities-of-expression?view=calendar
Susan's work may also be viewed at Ashok Jain Gallery, 58 Hester Street, NYC https://ajaingallery.com/Susan_Marx.php.